


Love To Feel Alive

by fineandwittie



Category: The Last Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Forest Sex, I don't know what's wrong with me, M/M, Oops?, Sex, This was supposed to be porn with feelings, and 11 percent porn, child death discussed, except it fades to black before they actually fuck, it's like 89 percent feelings, misplaced timeline, s1 e8, what if, why can't I wrote them fucking??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29709549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fineandwittie/pseuds/fineandwittie
Summary: What if it was Alfred who went to Uhtred in them rest to console him after the death of his son?
Relationships: Alfred the Great/Uhtred of Bebbanburg
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Always and forever, unbeta'd and unproofread.
> 
> There is a reference here to Uhtred's time on the slave ship which happens after when this is supposed to take place. Oops?

Alfred is unsurprised to find Uhtred alone, far from the hall and that small, lonely grave. The man sits by a fire, his armor and furs set aside, staring into the darkness with blankness in his eyes.

Alfred is quiet in his approach, but his attempt at stealth was never going to be a match for Uhtred’s senses and Alfred is still many meters from him when Uhtred turns to look at him.

“Lord.” Uhtred’s voice is a hoarse rumble, unlike anything Alfred had heard from him before.

He is unaccustomed to giving solace, but…he is helpless to do anything else. After all that Uhtred has done for him, all that Uhtred has endure for him, he can only try. 

He kneels down, across the small fire, and meets Uhtred’s gaze. His eyes look black in the darkness. “I would take this pain from you if I could.”

Uhtred flinches and his eyes drop down to the fire. Alfred stares at him a moment as something connects in his mind. The reason Uhtred would recoil from such a statement. 

“This is the payment. Is it not? You saved my son and I took yours from you. This was the trade that you made.” Uhtred does not speak, but raises his eyes again. There is pain in his face, all encompassing and unfathomably deep, but no regret. “Did you know it when you and Iseult made this bargain?”

Uhtred swallows, his throat bobbing. “No, Alfred. I did not know that this was the payment that the gods would take. I love my son. I will always love my son, but even knowing what I know now, I would make that bargain again.”

Alfred’s lips part on a gasp, first at hearing his first name said in such a way, and then louder at the sentiment. “But—“

“Alfred, you are my King. You are the King of Wessex, of England. And England cannot, will not be without you to craft it. The loss of your son would have been…too much for you to bear. Because it would not simply be your child dead. It would also be the future of your kingdom in ashes.”

“You believe I am unable to bear such a loss, so you bear it for me.” Alfred’s voice is thin, reedy. His joints ache with this new knowledge and he wonders what he had ever done for this man who sits before him to warrant such unthinkable devotion, such loyalty. “You are, as always, stronger than I.”

“Not stronger, Lord.” Uhtred shakes his head. Alfred silently mourns the return to title. “Not stronger. I am simply more accustomed to it than you. You have lost your brothers, yes, but so few of those around you are killed or die. I have lost my entire family and most of my found family. I have lost lovers before and friends to battle and to sickness. I have been betrayed and I have been abandoned. In my fight to escape the fortress, I killed my first lover, Torsten. I have experienced many forms of loss, Alfred. I do not regret sparing you this.”

“And yet, you should not have had to. I fear that the way of God is…beyond my comprehension.”

Uhtred nods and they sit in comfortable silence for a time. Alfred thinks about Uhtred’s words, about the trust that Uhtred has shown him, warmed by the familiarity of the man’s speech.

“Torsten?” Alfred asks as the darkness thickens around them.

“Yes. He was a friend of my brother, Ragnar, in our youth. Older than me by several years. He introduced me to pleasure.”

“A man?” Alfred cannot stop himself from blurting, though his face flushes at it and the strangled sound of his voice.

Uhtred turns to look at him, eyebrow raised, smirk twisting up one side of his mouth. “Of course, a man. What kind of name would Torsten be for a woman? It means the rock of Thor. Or is that kind of pleasure a sin to Christians?”

Alfred pauses, watching Uhtred as the fire casts shadows over his face. He is down to a linen shirt and light jacket, a state of undress that Alfred had witnessed many times since they had fled the city. Somehow, it feels more intimate. Perhaps because it is just the two of them now. 

He takes a moment to consider his answer. “It is…not well accepted, but not roundly condemned either. As far as I can tell, and I do not make a habit of asking about such things, most Christians simply do not care one way or the other.”

Uhtred tilts his head a little. Alfred blinks at him and attempts to convince himself there isn’t any kind of need burning in those shadowed eyes.

“And you, Alfred? What do you think?” There is something sly and rich in Uhtred’s voice that Alfred finds thoroughly distracting. 

He had come to offer comfort in the face of Uhtred’s suffering, but somehow he has lost sight of that. 

“I can’t say I have an opinion, having never indulged in the practice. Though, I would not condemn it in others.”

That smirk widens into a lascivious smile. Uhtred goes up on his knees to shed his jacket. “And would you be interested in forming an opinion on the matter, Alfred?”

Alfred blinks hard, trying to focus on something other than Uhtred’s hands where they grasp the hem of his shirt, ready to tug it off. “You keep saying my name.” He hears himself say and wonders when his mouth had decided to rebel against his rule.

“You like hearing it, so I keep saying it, Alfred. I can see how it effects you, makes you shiver.” He pulls the shirt off now. 

The muscles of Uhtred’s torso are like nothing Alfred has ever seen before. Well defined from hours and hours of sword work, from horsemanship, from manual labor, but there is a softness to his chest, his skin, a roundness that spoke of a life well lived, a life of thriving. 

Suddenly, Alfred wishes nothing more than to sink his teeth into that muscle, lave his tongue over one dusky pink nipple and then the other, bury his fingers into the thick locks of Uhtred’s hair. He wishes it more than he has ever wished for any pleasurable thing. 

He opens his mouth, fully intending to refuse, but what he says instead is, “Say it again.”

Uhtred’s smile widens, and he surges up to his feet.


	2. Chapter 2

Uhtred prowls around the edge of the fire, shedding his trousers and boots as he goes, so that by the time he reaches Alfred’s side, he is totally nude.

Being both a man and a soldier, Alfred is no stranger to the male form. Soliders are, on the whole, not subject to the same restrictions of behavior and modesty that that govern the rest of a Christian people and they live in such close quarters that such things are laughable at best. And yet, Alfred has had neither the time nor the inclination to allot more than a cursory glance at the bodies of the men around him.

And while this has certainly been true, with Uhtred bare before him, it is no longer. Alfred finds his gaze drawn down the lines of Uhtred’s body as surely and inevitably as a magnet to true north. He is thus presented with what he might, under duress, describe as a beautiful cock. Much the same length as his own, but with nearly twice the heft, Like Uhtred himself.

Saliva pools in his mouth. A buzzing desire that he could not comprehend or place rises in him. He wants, _dear God did he want_ , but he could not say with any certainty what it was exactly that his body yearned for. He loses track of time, of the darkening sky, of the fire crackling at his side. He could not have said how long it was that he spent examining Uhtred’s body, the want rising, cresting, only to rise further.

Finally he manages to drag his eyes away and back up to Uhtred’s face. The man is smiling at him, but not the lascivious smile from earlier nor the twisting smirk from earlier still. No, this smile is a soft, intimate expression that Alfred has never seen on a man’s face before.

Uhtred leans back, resting his buttocks on the heels of his feet, and says, “You wanted to give me comfort, because I am suffering. Yes?”

“Yes.” Alfred says, voice breathy and weak. He barely recognizes it as his own.

“Then take my suffering by taking my thoughts. Remind me instead of what it is to be alive.”

“Yes.” Alfred says again and shifts on his knees.

He finds that during their conversation, if one could call it that, that his fingers have gone stiff in his lap. He lifts his hands, trembling slightly, to the clasps on his robes, thinking to undo them, but the stiffened hands are useless for such a delicate task and he fumbles.

Uhtred sinks to his knees, putting himself at eye level with Alfred, and reaches out to brush Alfred’s hands away, replacing them with his own. Alfred, in turn, reaches out to run his fingertips over the soft flesh and knotted scars of Uhtred’s torso.

“I have never touched a man before in this manner. Are there…are there limits to what might be permissible or…” Alfred’s voice is barely above a whisper now, but Uhtred is close enough to hear him.

Uhtred, finished with his task, pushes the robes back from Alfred’s shoulders. Now bare to the night’s chill and Uhtred’s gaze, Alfred has a moment of uncertainty. He lacks the scars of battle, for he had never been injured in war. He lacks the definition of men like Uhtred because he is, first, a statesman, not a warrior. If Uhtred’s first lover was fighting with the Danes, than he would have been built like a Dane. Alfred himself is thin, though not nearly as sickly as he had been before the time he’d spent in the marshes, before Iseult’s tonics, but certainly not hearty.

But, perhaps he needn’t have worried. Uhtred draws back a little, letting his eyes run the length of Alfred’s now exposed torso. “Beautiful.” He breaths, quiet as a prayer, before meeting Alfred’s gaze again. His eyes burn. He leans in, taking Alfred’s face between his hands and running his thumbs across Alfred’s cheekbones. “The limits are whatever we say they are. What do you desire, Alfred, King of the Saxons?”

Alfred exhales, lets his fingers dig into Uhtred’s chest. “Kiss me.”

Uhtred smiles and does as he is asked. His mouth is as soft as any woman, but his beard catches against Alfred’s own in a sensation that sends a shiver down Alfred’s back. It is like nothing he has ever felt before and it is something he cannot imagine never feeling again.

As Uhtred runs the barest tip of his tongue against the seam of Alfred’s mouth, Alfred realizes that, even having done so little, barely a kiss, hardly a touch, has ruined him. Altered him irrevocably. And he will never be the same. His relationship with Uhtred will never be the same.

He finds, as he opens his mouth to Uhtred’s quest, that he cannot mourn the loss of the future they will no longer have. It has been replaced, instead, with one even more glorious. And he knows, with some distant corner of his mind not consumed with the taste of Uhtred’s tongue in his mouth and the feeling of Uhtred’s flesh beneath his hands, that this new future that they will now forge is bright. Brighter than it otherwise would have been and filled with so much promise.

He pulls back, licking his lips thoughtlessly and watching Uhtred track the movement, and thinks wryly that if he is to commit this sin again, this adultery, it is a comfort to know that at least no bastard will be born of it this time.

Uhtred’s eyes search his face, perhaps seeking some flicker of doubt, some gathering of regret, but find none. He looks content and warm in the light of the fire. “Are we to do this?” Uhtred says and offers that smile again.

Something in Alfred’s chest, some kernel of coldness he has carried for as long as he could remember, warms. “Yes.” Alfred says again. “Yes, we are. After all, you know as well as I that we have already passed the point of no return. Now that I have tasted you, touched you, there is no going back. You know this. Do you not?”

Uhtred laughs, a dark smokey sound, and nods. “Yes, Alfred. I do.” His hands trail over Alfred’s jaw, down to his neck. He examines the sharp contrast of his skin against Alfred’s pale throat. “We were already bonded, but now we are cleaved together so tightly, it will be impossible to tell where one of us ends and the other begins.” He looks up, meeting Alfred’s eyes. “Do you regret it? Such a bond with a pagan?”

Alfred begins to shake his head, but Uhtred does not allow him to answer, merely continues. “With Uhtred the Godless? Who you have lied to and manipulated?”

Alfred feels the words like a wound, touching his soul. “No.” He says, shaking his head again. “No, I do not regret it. I have been blind. Before the swamp, at Winchester, at Wareham, since the very beginning. I have been blind. You have sacrificed so much for me, _given your child_ for me, and for what? What have you received in return? What loyalty have I given you? What respect? I have given you nothing…” Alfred presses his hands tighter against Uhtred’s chest and takes a moment to enjoy the hushed sound of Uhtred’s breath catching in his throat. “Are actions so devoted, so selfless to be met with ridicule? Betrayal? Abandonment? Disdain? Simply because you are not a god-fearing man? And yet, you have been baptized. Twice if Father Beocca is to be believed. So there is a seed of Christ in you. Perhaps it will come to full bloom. Perhaps it will not. But either way, the Good Book says judge not, lest ye be judged. And so, I am resolved to abandon, not you, but my judgement of your paganism. I realize now that your rough edges…your Danish practices are no fault of yours. You were taken as a child. You were raised among them. You became one of them. A fact for which I have condemned you in the past, but for which I am immeasurably grateful. For if you had not, you would be dead now and we should never have met. And that, Uhtred Ragnarson of Bebbenburg, would be the greatest of tragedies.”

Uhtred’s eyes are wide, awed and vulnerable. For a long moment, that seems to last both an eon and the space of a breath, they stare at one another. Finally, Uhtred’s breath stutters out and he surges up, pulling Alfred into a kiss that is fiercer than any Alfred had ever experienced before.

It is overwhelming, like the crashing surf of an oncoming storm, swallowing everything in its path and smashing anything that came before into oblivion. Alfred clutches at Uhtred’s shoulders, at his back, running impatient hands over the bumps and ridges of scars tissue. When Uhtred’s kiss finally eases, Alfred only just had enough brainpower left to realize what it is he is feeling.

He jerks back, his eyes wide and his heart beating wildly. “Lash marks. I never ordered you to be whipped.”

“No, Lord. You did not.” The words are tight, the tone worse. A beat passes without Uhtred meeting his gaze. “They are from the slavers, Alfred. Long healed and put out of mind. If you…If you find them distasteful, simply ignore them. Or I could put my shirt back on.”

Alfred took an unsteady, feeling cold. “I find them, as with the rest of your scars, to be a badge, earned in battle, fighting for a just cause. Uhtred, you have been too long a slave. Too long subject to the whims and caprices of others. Myself included.” Alfred swallows, his throat tight and his stomach leaded. “I free you from any oaths that you have ever sworn to me and I shall absolve your debts to the church. You are free to stay or go, as you please. I wish for you always to be by my side. At my right hand, shoulder to shoulder, but I will no longer trap you there or shackle you to me.” He runs his hands over the lash marks again. “I refuse to be no better than those who would do this to you. I refuse to see something beautiful, something as…worthy of care…as you are, Uhtred, and break it under my heel. If I am that kind of man, than I will be that kind of king. And if that is so, we are lost.”

Uhtred’s eyes are wet, glossy with unshed tears, and filled with reverence. His hands on Alfred’s skin feel like a benediction, his lips and tongue a gift from God Himself. They fall into one another, like starving men at a feast, like zealots before their God, like lovers who have been too long denied the very thing that sustains them.

In so doing, they cement the future of England and the final defeat of the Dane.


End file.
